Professors, we know you’re busy ­­— really, really busy.  You have to develop and teach your courses and labs, coordinate and run your journal clubs and seminars, direct your lab’s research efforts, write grants and publications, counsel and mentor your students, and stay current on everything related to your teaching and research topics.

NCBI has information that can help with all of this, but there are so many interesting records and so little time to organize them. Sign up (Help) for or log in (Help) to your free NCBI Account and let us help you get started and get organized!

Read on – or watch the video embedded below – to learn more about what you can do with your NCBI Account.

Common tasks with your NCBI Account

Here are some important tasks an NCBI Account can help you with.

Getting alerts when new records are available

With new scientific information constantly coming out, NCBI’s databases, including PubMed, have been the go-to-place to do research, learn things and keep up-to-date.  This is critical for many aspects of your job. Use your NCBI Account to keep current.

• Find and collect materials for teaching
• Keep up with your research competitors
• Check on your own publications
• Find out more about a relative’s diagnosis
• and more…

See how you can run a search and save it, so that you can rerun it again when you are ready or automate it to send you updates when new records become public (Blog Post, Video).

Creating collections of materials

Use your NCBI Account to compile organized collections to support your teaching and research efforts in a number of ways.

• Store preparatory materials useful for course development or grant writing
• Create public lists for
  • courses or seminar references
  • reading lists for your lab personnel
  • important reading materials for your research group
• Maintain your own personal publications list (bibliography)

See how you can set up such custom collections of database records (PubMed or Gene or Protein records, for example) that you find interesting (Help).and how to quickly export a whole list of records (Help).

Producing lists of key references to share

Use your NCBI Account to create lists for students in your course or lab sessions, journal clubs, seminar, and your own research group.

• Store and provide a link to reference/background information for a course session
• Create a collection of PubMed, Gene, Protein and other records that support a laboratory session
• Publicize a list of publications for your Journal Club or Seminar
• Form a repository of reference materials for research collaborators to share

See how to create your collection and make public so that you can share a link to it (Help).

Managing your own publication list (bibliography)

It is important to maintain and have access to an up-to-date list of your publications for your CV, professional webpage, college or university faculty profile, grant proposals, and more. You can use your NCBI account to maintain your credentials.

• Maintain your up-to-date list in My Bibliography, a special type of collection
• Quickly and easily add your PubMed- and PMC-listed publications
• Include non-NCBI records, such as papers published in non-PubMed journals and textbook chapters that you’ve authored.
• Connect your information with your ORCID
• Using My Bibliography will enable you to list your publications – even if you have changed your name or published under different versions of your name.

See how to create your My Bibliography list (Help), quickly export the list of your records (Help) and make your bibliography public with a live URL to embed in your webpage or faculty profile (Help).

Creating a Federal Biosketch to include with your federal grant proposals

You must provide a specially formatted Biosketch for each of your Federal grant proposal. Use your NCBI Account to create and maintain your Biosketch.

• Use SciENcv to repurpose your My Bibliography list and NCBI account information to produce your Federal grant proposal Biosketches.
• Export your new Biosketch in MS Word (.docx) or Adobe Acrobat (.pdf) format.

See how to generate and automatically pre-populate an NIH or NSF Biosketch using SciENcv (Help).

Complying with NIH’s Public Access Policy for your funded grants

Congratulations on getting your NIH grant!  You need to make sure you comply with the NIH Public Access Policy by making sure published work produced from this grant funding becomes publicly available in the PMC database. Your My Bibliography collection view can will track this if it is linked to your NIH eRA Commons account.

See how to comply with the NIH Public Access Policy (Blog Post, Help, Video).

BONUS: Customizing the display of search results

Setting how your search results are shown can you help find relevant results faster.  Use your NCBI Account to set custom display settings.

• Highlight search terms in results
• Lock in useful sidebar filters
• Set sort order & the number of results to display by default
• Create custom filters

See how to customize your search results displays (Video).

As you can see, your NCBI Account can make your life easier!

(This is an update of a February 2016 NCBI Insights post to accompany the Aug 6, 2018 NCBI webinar.)

• Quick Tips